Kafka on the Shore (75 Books – X)
The one benefit of having a very long commute to work each day is that it allows one to get through a lot of audiobooks and podcasts. Not that I actually listen to a lot of audiobooks, admittedly, mainly because I like to mark up my books and share interesting passages on twitter as I go. They do benefit from professional narration, though, like a radio play, and poetry especially benefits from being read out loud. Of course, audiobooks are also a distraction while driving, though if I do get into an auto accident at least I’ll go out listening to something good.
Anyway, Kafka on the Shore is the first book I’ve read (listened to? whatever) by Murakami Haruki. The book starts with a fifteen-year-old boy running away from home, and at first one thinks this will be a realistic story about a runaway. By the time one gets to the old man who talks with cats and fish raining from the sky it’s pretty clear that this isn’t that sort of novel, though perhaps it does qualify as magical realism, since these things are dealt with straightforwardly and relatively realistically. The boy, who takes the name “Kafka,” takes up about half the novel in first-person narration, while the intertwined other half has a third-persona narrator, focusing on the old man, Nakata, and his backstory.…